All New Euro 6 Diesel Cars Are Still Highly Polluting, Says Study

A new study reveals that all new Euro 6 compliant vehicles running in Europe currently has higher count of NOx emissions. On the other hand, all Euro 6 petrol cars are performing much better than its diesel counterparts. The Real Urban Emissions Initiative (TRUE) made public a ratings system reflecting real-world emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) measured for over 90 per cent of passenger car registrations in Europe. The rating uses a simple green/yellow/red (good/moderate/poor) scheme to profile the European vehicle fleet as well as vehicle families and individual vehicle models.

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"This initial project is an important first step," said Rachel Muncrief, program director for the ICCT, "but remote sensing could take us very much further in terms of our ability to monitor, analyze, and control vehicle pollutant emissions and gain control of Europe's urban air-quality problem."

(All New Euro 6 Diesel Cars Are Still Highly Polluting, Says New Study)

TRUE is a partnership of the FIA Foundation, the International Council on Clean Transportation, the Global New Car Assessment Programme, Transport and Environment, and C40 Cities, which seek to bring transparency on vehicle emissions and urban air quality. It is the largest collection of data brought to bear thus far on the problem of air pollution from vehicles in Europe.

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The International Council on Clean Transportation calculated the ratings for approximately 4,850 vehicle models, nearly all designed and built to Euro standards 3-6. Further analysis of this initial data offers additional insight into excess NOx emissions in the EU. The report revealed that four manufacturer groups had average emissions more than 12 times above the Euro 6 diesel type-approval limit, and the highest-emitting vehicle family has emissions 18 times the limit. However, all the Euro 6 diesel models rated exceeded the Euro 6 diesel NOX emissions limits measured in real-world driving. The highest-emitting petrol Euro 6 vehicle family has approximately the same level of NOx emissions as the lowest-emitting diesel vehicle family. The Euro 5 diesel families performed particularly poorly as all had NOx emissions at least twice the limit, and the worst had emissions 18 times the limit.

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The initial data set comprises samples collected from France, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom over the past ten years and pooled together in the CONOX project, funded by the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment. The data set presently holds 750,000 records. The TRUE ratings were developed from a subset of 375,000 measurements, excluding trucks and vans and any incomplete measurements.